Does Google Like Subfolders or Subdomains Better?

As a webmaster, you have a choice when organizing the structure of the websites in your domain. You can add a third-level domain to create a subdomain and create separate subsites within your website. For example, a subdomain is "" Or you can create subfolders and reference all content through directories inside the second-level domain, as in "" While Google used to favor the subdomain method, it doesn't any more. According to Google's main liaison with webmasters, Google has no preference, and both approaches result in similar search engine placements.


When you use subdomains to organize your website content, you create different addresses for specific content. Google uses this approach for its major projects. For example, "" is the home page for Google News and "" is the home page for Gmail. To use subdomains, you need some knowledge of the domain name system, you must know how to create DNS entries for subdomains at your domain registrar and you must know how to create virtual hosts on your Web server. If you plan on using secure sockets layer with subdomains, you'll have to purchase a wildcard certificate.


It's easier to set up subdirectories because they are a natural extension of a domain. Google uses subdomains for many of the tools it provides. For example, Google Webmaster Tools is located at "" and Google Analytics is found at "" When you organize your content in subdirectories, there's no need to create additional DNS records, you don't have to configure virtual hosts, and you only need a single SSL certificate to provide secure connections.

Subdomains Used to be Better

When Google returns search results, it limits the number of times each domain appears to provide users with a representative list of websites ranked in order of relevance. Prior to 2008, Google considered each subdomain as a separate domain. This enabled a website with subdomains to appear more than once in search results, providing an advantage over sites that used subdirectories. As webmasters noticed how Google treated subdomains, some began creating multiple subdomains to artificially gain multiple listings for the same website in search results. Google changed its algorithm in late 2007 to eliminate this advantage and now treats subdomains and subfolders equally.

Neither Is Better Now

Google specifically states that using subdomains versus subfolders has little or no effect on search engine rankings. The company advises webmasters to use the method that's easiest for them and that helps them best organize the content on their websites. The Google search team encourages beginning webmasters to use subdirectories because they are easier to implement and generally easier to maintain. Google's webmaster liaison's personal preference is to use subdirectories to organize the content on his website.



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